As you can probably guess, I’ve been rather busy recently.  But it’s a good sort of busy, so at least there’s that.

School is still going well, and we’ve decided to change our schedule somewhat.  We’re now going to Mass and a short religious instruction class on Thursday mornings with several other homeschooling families.  I’m trying to figure out if we should also try to go to Mass with them on Tuesday mornings as well.  There isn’t a class on Tuesday mornings, but still it would be nice to go to Mass more often and good for the kids to see each other more often as well.

Matt is working away at the house, and he’s started to blog about it again too.  I haven’t been doing nearly as much as I’d like or feel I should be doing, but I’m having a hard time finding the time and energy to do much.  Having three kids,  homeschooling, cooking, laundry, helping with the cleaning, taking care of the garden, etc, etc, doesn’t seem to leave much time for construction.  I’m not happy about it, but Matt seems to be understanding…  although I’m sure he’d like me to be doing more.

We’re getting the house painted in a couple weeks, and we’re trying to figure out a color.  We know what sort of color we want (warm tan-ish color with a cream-ish trim and a red-ish accent color and door) but we’re having a hard time with the paint chips.  We keep finding something that looks like it is what we want, but when we buy it and put it on the house, we find that it isn’t what we thought it was going to be.  It is a frustrating and expensive experience!  So far we’ve found a main color that is too mustardy, one that is too peachy, and another that was too light.  The light one will probably be the trim color, so at least that helps.  There are supposed to be computer programs that you can use to help with this, but if you can’t trust the paint chip, I’m not sure why I would trust the program to show me the accurate color.

Living with extended family is still going well - at least on our end.  I think we’re getting a little loud and obnoxious at times, but such is life with little ones.  I do sometimes find myself thinking about my first roommate experience, where everything seemed to be going along just great until I moved out…  at which point my roommates proceeded to tell me everything I’d done wrong for the entire summer.  Not that I think that would happen here - we’re all a lot more mature than that! - but still, there are times when I think that perhaps things are going a little too well.  *grin*

We’ll just keep plugging away at the house and hopefully we’ll be out of the way before too long.  It is very nice to not be solely responsible for all the cleaning, and to have an extra set of hands to help with the kids - Nathan especially.  It is much lovely to cook dinner while someone is holding him rather than having him fussing in the sling, backpack, bouncy seat etc.  I’ll definitely miss that once we’re in our house!